The invention generally relates to a food slice and processes for making and packaging it. More specifically, the invention provides a food slice consisting of two or more food items, such as nut butter and jelly, and a method for making and packaging the food slice.
The food industry has seen a large number of new products over the last few decades. Many of these products take traditional foods and place them in a variety of package formations. The package formation may facilitate convenient storage and handling, ease of use and application, or portability and portion control.
Attempts have been made, for example, to develop food products and packaging configurations that combine foods that are customarily combined and consumed by the consumer. Examples include peanut butter and jelly, chocolate and marshmallow, or catsup and mayonnaise. While products such as these are manually mixed and enjoyed by the consumer, precombining these products into a single food product is highly desirable from a marketing and consumer time savings standpoint. Yet it presents many problems, including processing, product stability, moisture migration, and color stability. A variety of formulations known as peanut butter and jelly are consumed when spread on bread or toasted bread. The current majority of peanut butters and jellies are packaged in jars and are portioned with either knives or spoons onto bread. Peanut butter, in combination with the sweetness and flavor of a grape jelly, for example, makes a simple, inexpensive topping or sandwich when used upon a grain-based bakery item such as crackers or bread, and presents itself as an attractive folk recipe. It will also be appreciated that the science of sensory evaluation of mastication and the expectation of flavors, texture, and sensation demands that the peanut butter and jelly remain relatively unmixed within the sandwich until consumed.
Examples of precombined products and package formulations are described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,772,038 to Ayres; U.S. Pat. No. 5,312,641 to Castillo; and U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,567,454 and 5,855,939 to Bogdan; Canadian patent application CA 2233097 to Chenn; and an article, Food Product Development, McCormick, R. D. Vol. 9:9, pages 11,12, 14 (1975) (“FPD article”). This literature discloses peanut butter, or peanut butter and jelly, in a slice form. However, the inventors are not aware of commercially available packaged food slices consisting of a single cohesive mass of two or more food slice items, such as peanut butter and jelly, or such food slices that are made using continuous, high-speed processes or that provide convenience, portion control, and similar sensory characteristics to those of the traditionally consumed, manually-combined counterpart food items.
Providing a combined food product that can be processed in a high speed, commercially viable manner is difficult. While creating layers of food material on a bench-top offers a myriad of possibilities because of very few demands on quality or performance, providing commercially successful product formulas and processes are much more demanding. Commercial-scale equipment requires ingredients that are cohesive yet pumpable. Equipment of this nature runs continuously which disallows processes requiring long firming or body modification times.
Further, folk recipes rarely require a shelf life of greater than a day, so that shelf life and the detrimental effects of storage for products consisting of two or more food items which are manually combined by the consumer are rarely considered. But it is readily apparent to persons with ordinary skill in this food processing art that a shelf life of many months, such as 3-6 months or more, at refrigerated temperatures is desired in order to meet retail distribution requirements. However, it is also known that combining two food items having dissimilar moisture contents will cause the water to migrate from the food item with higher moisture to the food item with lower moisture. Water migration, in the specific case of jelly next to peanut butter, for example, causes darkening and a noticeable flavor change within the peanut butter.
Attempts have been made to deal with the water migration problem. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,969,514 to Tiemstra describes precombined products, such as a nut spread and a jelly or jam, in which an adjustment is made to the water activity of one of the food items to increase the time period in which the food items are maintained as separate and discrete. U.S. Pat. No. 3,552,980 to Cooper describes a hydrophilic spread such as peanut butter which is packaged in contact with a sweet aqueous spread that is similar to jelly. The sweet aqueous spread is modified with a non-aqueous edible liquid viscosity reducing agent such as glycerin to enable the products to remain stable with reduced moisture migration overtime. Both the Tiemstra and Cooper patents disclose food items packaged in jarred containers.
Oxidation of the peanut oil in peanut butter is also a problem, causing the peanut butter to deteriorate and decreasing its shelf life.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a food slice consisting of a single cohesive mass of two or more food items, such as peanut butter and jelly, which may be wrapped in a packaging film, sealed and produced on a commercial scale.
It is another object of the invention to provide commercially viable, high speed, continuous processing methods for making and packaging food portions, including individually wrapped food slices. A related goal is to ensure that the food portion is on the one hand cohesive, while on the other hand pumpable and extrudable. It is particularly desirable that the invention be compatible with high speed, continuous processing equipment such as individual wrap slice machines described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,440,860 and 5,347,792 to Meli, for example. Those knowledgeable in the art will realize that this machinery described in these patents, suitably modified as described below, as well as other similar processing equipment, may be used for the production and packaging of food portions consisted of combined food items according to the present invention.
It is yet another object to provide such food portions in a variety of configurations, such as bi- or tri-laminates, stripes, variegated, or other shapes encased in flexible packaging materials.
It is a further object to provide a food product that combines two or more different food items, such as peanut butter and jelly, in a simple package that provides portion control, allows easy removal from the package, and dispenses with the need to use a utensil for manually combining or spreading the food items. Preferably a packaged slice would be provided that permits complete manual release from its flexible packaging material and that is integral enough to allow for some manipulation before consumption.
It is still another object to provide a convenient, single cohesive mass of food product that combines two or more different food items, while enabling the food product to be manually removed from its wrapper and held, manipulated, eaten or applied elsewhere using only the fingers, and without the product disintegrating or deteriorating in an unusable or unsightly manner. A related goal is to provide a combined food product with organoleptic and textural semblance to its traditional manually-combined counterpart.
It is yet another object to manipulate component viscosity through composition, shear, and temperature to prevent excessive mixing and commingling of multiple components during processing.
Still a further object is to provide a high barrier film to minimize oxygen migration and subsequent product degradation during packaged storage.
Another object, in order to maximize shelf life of the combined, conformed food product, is to modify water activity to achieve maximum stability of the food components during packaged storage.
Definition of Claim Terms
The following terms are used in the claims of the patent as filed and are intended to have their broadest meaning consistent with the requirements of law. Where alternative meanings are possible, the broadest meaning is intended. All words used in the claims are intended to be used in the normal, customary usage of grammar and the English language.
“Acidulants” means food acidulants, including food grade acids such as citric acid. “Co-extrusion” means pushing two or more food products through one or more different orifices at roughly the same time.
“Conformed” means two or more food product streams that are coextruded and shaped within a flexible packaging material into a food portion.
“Extrusion” means pushing a product through an orifice.
“Food portion” means any food product, regardless of size, shape or configuration, including bricks, chunks, loaves, bars, slices, etc.
“Fruit juice” means fruit juice, fruit juice concentrate, dried fruit juice, or reconstituted forms thereof.
“Gel” or “gelling agent” means substances that qualify as gels as that term is normally used in the art of food science, and refers to a colloid in a form more solid than a sol.
“Hardness” means the Texture Profile Analysis test of plunging a cylinder into the food product and measuring the maximal force achieved during elastic compression to just before failure of the food item as determined by gel disruption.
“Jelly” means gelled food products including all types of jellies, fruit spreads, jams, preserves, marmalades, fruit butters, dessert gels, gelatin slices, and the like. “Jelly” may be made from sugars, pectins, gelatin, gelling agents and/or acidulants. “Jelly” may be flavored from the juice of fruits, concentrated fruit juice, natural flavor, artificial flavor or any combination of those flavors. The extract or puree of any food source may also be used in “jelly” to impart both function and flavor. “Jelly” is not limited as defined within the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, §§ 21:150.140, 21:150.160.
“Maintaining individual product identity” means two or more different food items provide together in the same package and present in discreet phases such that each of the separate food items may be visually discerned at the surface of the food portion by the consumer.
“Nut butter” means any food product made from nut solids and vegetable fats plus other ingredients such as stabilizers, flavorants, flavor enhancers, bulking agents, emulsifiers, and sweeteners. “Nut butter” also includes items termed “peanut butter”, such as food items prepared from clean, sound, shelled peanuts by grinding roasted, mature peanut kernels from which the seed coats have been removed, and to which sugar, dextrose, and/or salt may be added to enhance the flavor, and to which hydrogenated vegetable oils may be added to prevent oil separation and to promote consistency. “Nut butter” is not limited to any definitions for “nut butter” or “nut spread” or “peanut butter” as defined within the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, § 21:164.150.
“Organoleptic attributes” mean the tactile, olfaction and gustation qualities of a food, as identified in the field and science of measuring human response to foods.
“Package” means any encapsulation or covering for a food product.
“Peanut flour” means a food item prepared from raw shelled peanuts that have been cleaned, blanched and sorted to remove any damaged or discolored nuts along with any foreign materials. The nuts are then roasted and hydraulically pressed to remove some of the peanut oil content. The product is then crushed and milled to a desired fineness.
“Set ” means for a gelled product to reach a substantially constant viscosity.
“Slice” means a food product having an area/height ratio of greater than 20:1.
“Sugar” means any sugar, as well as any sugar syrup, including any carbohydrate-derived mixture including mono-, di-, and higher saccharides either in their naturally occurring state or derived by hydrolysis, and including mixtures containing sufficient water to be present in a liquid or fluid state.
“Texture” means the physical sensation of a food product as it interacts with the human senses, including its appearance and its mouth-feel upon mastication.
“Thickeners” mean constituents for increasing the viscosity of a food product, including gelling and non-gelling agents, such as proteins, polysaccharides and hydrocolloids.
“Water activity” means the ratio of partial vapor pressure of water, measured above the food item in question, to the vapor pressure of pure water at a given temperature.